When medical bills pile up and insurance premiums keep climbing, most families feel powerless — like the decisions that shape their healthcare happen somewhere far away, in boardrooms and congressional offices they’ll never enter. Now, five Michigan cities are trying to change that, handing residents a formal seat at the table through newly approved citizen health advisory boards.
Voters in Benton Harbor, Lansing, East Lansing, Kalamazoo, and Portage overwhelmingly approved ballot measures last week to create citizen-led committees charged with studying healthcare costs and advising local leaders on ways to bring them down. The margins were striking: Benton Harbor passed the measure with 80% approval, Lansing with 66% approval, East Lansing with 69% approval, Kalamazoo with 69% approval, and Portage with 55% approval. For many voters, the message was simple: healthcare costs are a crisis, and someone needs to start paying attention closer to home.
A late-October poll confirmed what many Michigan families already know firsthand — health insurance and medical costs ranked as the top concern among voters statewide. That anxiety is playing out against a backdrop of Medicaid eligibility changes expected to reduce coverage for thousands and cost healthcare providers millions of dollars.
What These Committees Would Actually Do
The new boards — made up of seven or eight volunteer members — would be written directly into city charters. Their job would not be to pass laws or control budgets, but to listen, research, and report. Specifically, they would hold public forums to hear how healthcare costs are affecting residents’ lives, track how federal and state lawmakers vote on health legislation, and produce a formal “Healthcare Action Plan” for city leaders by October 1 of every even-numbered year. City councils would then be required to hold public hearings on those plans by October 15.
Committee members won’t be paid, though they can be reimbursed for expenses. They are expected to bring research, analytical, and community engagement skills to the role.
Ryan Cohn, a spokesperson for City Action Michigan — the nonprofit driving the effort — framed the vote as a mandate from residents tired of waiting for federal solutions. Cohn works for a Florida-based public relations firm, Sachs Media.
“Voters sent a clear message. They want action on healthcare costs, and they’re done waiting for Congress to deliver it.”
Real Challenges, Real Stakes
For a city like Benton Harbor, the stakes could not feel more immediate. The city’s only hospital closed 40 years ago. Its median household income sits at just over $31,000 — among the lowest in Michigan. The city is currently absorbing hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra costs to cover ambulance services because so many residents are uninsured.
Alex Little, Benton Harbor’s city manager, acknowledged the board concept is different from most municipal advisory committees, which typically deal with parks, transit, or libraries. “This is more of a study group to understand price and services for healthcare,” he said. As for costs to the city, Little added: “I would not envision it would be a lot.”
Still, he raised a practical concern: Benton Harbor may struggle to find enough residents with healthcare and finance backgrounds to staff the committee effectively.
Scott Greer, a University of Michigan professor who studies how political systems operate and shape health policy, acknowledged that federal and state decisions dominate a healthcare system of “infinite complexity.” But he argued these local committees could still generate meaningful, ground-level conversations that would otherwise never happen.
As an example, Greer pointed to emergency care for homeless residents — a community might identify how much it’s spending on ER visits and shift policy toward more routine preventive care, reducing expensive hospitalizations down the line. For families watching their own medical bills grow, that kind of local thinking could translate into real savings.
Concerns About Cost — and Who Paid for the Campaign
Not everyone welcomed the new boards. In Kalamazoo, the city commission voted unanimously to oppose the ballot measure before Election Day. Mayor David Anderson raised pointed questions about the long-term financial burden on taxpayers.
“Who’s gonna pay for all this work going forward in perpetuity? City residents. The cost of this will end up being a reduction in resources for something else that we might care a lot about.”
Kalamazoo Commissioner Chris Praedel raised separate concerns about the money behind the campaign, warning that it was
“critically important for the public to think through how this sets a precedent or how this could impact things in a very dark, mischievous way.”
Those concerns have merit. Through mid-October, the ballot committee for City Action Michigan reported receiving $2.8 million in donations — all from out-of-state dark-money nonprofits that are not required to disclose their donors. Those groups include American Opportunity Action, Cityscope, Global Impact Social Welfare Fund, and Global Impact Ventures, all known to fund liberal political initiatives while shielding donor identities. The funds were used for advertising supporting the ballot proposals and to pay canvassers who gathered signatures to get the measures onto ballots.
The campaigns also ran advertising that prominently attacked Republican congressional incumbents Tom Barrett and Bill Huizenga, both of whom represented competitive districts where the ballot measures appeared. Critics alleged the petition drives were designed partly to collect voter data and amplify negative messaging about those lawmakers. Both Barrett and Huizenga lost their seats in the November election.
Lansing Mayor Andy Schor, while indicating he would honor the voters’ decision, was candid about his ambivalence. “If the voters want it, then we’ll set up a committee and we’ll do it,” he told Bridge Michigan before the election, acknowledging the proposals were also making a political point.
Chokwe Pitchford, a Berrien County commissioner whose nonprofit received $100,000 from City Action Michigan to support the effort — money used to pay canvassers in Benton Harbor and Kalamazoo — acknowledged the funding transparency problem directly. It’s a “fair criticism,” he said, to note that neither he nor the voters know exactly where the money came from. But he pushed back on the idea that the initiative itself was harmful.
“Everyone has access to these tools, and if the other side wants to push a ballot proposal about the Second Amendment or about pro-life policies — if the voters vote for it, that’s democracy.”
Pitchford argued the reports produced by these committees could be tailored to fit each community’s most pressing health problems — whether that’s infant mortality, obesity, or environmental pollution.
“How do we gather all of that information, put it into something that is actionable, and take that to Lansing and to Washington, (DC) so that citizens can lobby their government on behalf of the changes to healthcare that they believe in?”
he said.
For now, cities across Michigan are reviewing what comes next. Officials in East Lansing and Portage said they are evaluating the steps required to stand up the new committees. What those boards accomplish — and whether they can truly help families navigate a healthcare system that feels increasingly out of reach — remains to be seen. For more on health policy developments in Michigan, coverage continues as these communities move forward.
Comments are closed.